This page is dedicated to an off season project that will explore different methodologies of driving the motor.


Currently I'm look for a few students (six or less) to explore the following drives during the off season of 2011:
  • Car
  • Tank
  • Swerve
  • Crab
  • Snake

I'm expecting active participating of all students on this team. Some of the tasks will be:
  • C++ programming
  • Java programming
  • Arduino programming
  • tk/tcl programming
  • simulation using MATLAB and Simulink
  • using freemind to mind map problems
  • creating and maintaining excel spreadsheets that will help us determine expect performance parameters
  • building a scale model of this years robot's drive system
  • creating and presenting presentations for both internal (full team updates) and external (other teams and judges) audiences
  • helping rookie teams with their drive systems

The students will also be required to monitor this Wiki and use the hyperlinks and keyword searches to stay current at the tasks at hand. Most lectures/meetings will consist of discussions and answering of questions, I'm not expecting to have the time to introduce new concepts, I am expecting all the new concepts to be introduced via this and other Wiki pages.

Interesting and helpful resources online
2008 WPI workshop presentation
FRC team 1640 wiki page
FRC approved motor specification
Drive-train basics

Please see discussions that are attached to this Wiki page for questions I expect the students to be able to answer.


A bit of me trying to explain the swerve algorithm my dad and I came up with.
rotation and translation swerve
didn't have enough time for a ppt due to vacation and stuff, might try and explain things on the white board next meeting. I have a console program in C++ that uses this to spit out values, hoping we can get it on the robot without much work.